1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical microscope system for detecting nanowires, and more particularly, to an optical microscope system for detecting nanowires by means of a conventional optical microscope to facilitate alignment of a nanowire sample with a pattern.
The present invention has been produced from the work supported by the IT R&D program of MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication)/IITA (Institute for Information Technology Advancement) [2006-S-006-01, Components/Module technology for Ubiquitous Terminals] in Korea.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Photolithography processes are essential for fabricating electronic devices with nanowires. Especially, in patterning a structure for fabricating an electronic device, a basic requirement is a technique for obtaining a sampling image to align a sample with a pattern during photolithography.
A diameter of a nanowire used in fabricating a nanowire electronic device usually ranges from several nanometers to several tens of nanometers. A length of the nanowire generally ranges from several tens of nanometers to several micrometers, or several micrometers to several tens of micrometers. In fabricating an electronic device by means of nanowires that are relatively thick, that is, in the range of several tens of nanometers in diameter and in the range of several micrometers in length, as it is easy to obtain a sampling image by a general optical microscope, conventional semiconductor manufacturing equipment is available for aligning a sample to a pattern.
But, if nanowires used for fabricating an electronic device are relatively fine, that is, in the range of 0˜20 nanometers in diameter (specifically, less than 10 nm or 10˜20 nm), it is not easy to obtain a nanowire image by a conventional optical microscope. Furthermore, even in the case of using single-wall carbon nanotubes with a thickness of several nanometers for fabricating an electronic device, it is also difficult to obtain a nanowire image by a conventional optical microscope.
For the purpose of solving the aforementioned problems, a high-resolution microscope, such as an atomic force microscope (AFM) or scanning electron microscope (SEM), is employed in fabricating an electronic device with nanowires or carbon nanotubes that are finer in diameter, because it is much better resolution than an optical microscope and therefore advantageous in obtaining a distinct sampling image necessary for the alignment process.
However, such a high-resolution microscope is relatively expensive and requires more time to obtain a sampling image than the optical microscope, and therefore it is disadvantageous to commercial use. In addition, it is not easy to commercially fabricate a nanowire device on a large scale.